The invention relates to ammunition, preferably for machine cannons, including a projectile, which is provided with a tracer and a stabilizing element, and whose lethal range is limited when a target is missed.
Ammunition of the above-mentioned type is customarily employed to substantially avoid inadvertent damage outside a given region from a projectile that missed its target. If a flying target is involved, the projectile could endanger friendly ground troops. This applies for ground-to-air combat as well as for air-to-air combat.
Spin stabilized explosive projectiles have an explosive charge and an impact detonator. The impact detonator is provided with means which permit the detonator to become effective if the spin of the projectile falls below a given value. The explosive charge is then used to self-destruct the projectile and thus limits its lethal range. Such a detonator is known from U.S. Pat. No. 3,882,782. Explosive projectiles are customarily of full caliber. Therefore they have a large flow cross section. Consequently they are subject to annoying deceleration. By comparison, their path of flight is therefore considerably curved. They are thus essentially unsuitable to combat fast flying targets (low-flying aircraft and guided missiles) and extremely maneuvrable flying targets (combat helicopters). Since the above-mentioned targets frequently have structured and multi-layer regions, the effectiveness of explosive projectiles is significantly limited here as well. The manner in which the above-mentioned targets are used, necessitates combatting them with machine weapons which, with high cadence and fast directiveness, have the greatest direct hit probability.
In the field of use in question, the high density subcaliber projectile is consequently the selected means. It has an elongated flight path. The drawback here is the need for a self-destruct charge because such charge and the means to actuate it adversely affect the average density of the projectile.